Graphmented AR app: tangible profits in 3D

What is Graphmented?

Graphmented is a productivity app available on the app store for Apple users with iPhone 6s (onwards) and iPad Pro. The minimum iOS requirement for this app is iOS 11.0.

Turning the regular and mundane spreadsheets into an interactive 3D augmented-reality application that enables one to not just work with virtual sheets in their real environment but also allows one to plot 3D & 2D graphs; record & share videos; and stream & cast charts.

The app comes in two versions, the first version loads a limited set of data from iCloud and Google sheets and is free of cost whereas, the second version gives an unlimited access to the sheets from iCloud and Google sheets at a small amount that varies from country to country.

This AR app has been developed by BADR, a company primarily based in Alexandria, Egypt whose services include data engineering, data visualisation, social media analytics and Web & Mobile Applications to the small and medium-sized organisations around the world.

The purpose and inspiration behind augmenting spreadsheets

There were over 40 software engineers at BADR who believed that the commercialisation of Augmented Reality had opened doors to a whole new User Experience (UX) and as a data-focused company, they saw a huge potential in data visualisation with the help of AR.

This idea supported by conventional AR demos of interior planning and design inspired them to replace the cups and vases of those apps with charts and tables to create a more tangible understanding of the data and hence came alive Graphmented AR!

Challenges along the way

BADR provides one of the top quality services in its field and as a team, they aim to overcome challenges together. The biggest challenge the team faced during the development of Grapmented was working smoothly with the Apple’s ARkit which during the creation of the app was still a very new concept to the software engineers. The team patiently invested the time in educating each other well about ARkit to create an app that is as intuitive as possible.

The team put in an immense lot of hard work in the It is also a bit hard work in the new technology to make Graphmented a reality.

People, tools and tutorials

With very little to no support from any developers community, the team of BADR were the only brains involved in creating this app. The team used Apple’s ARkit and library of Scenekit, a 3D graphics software by Apple Inc. to create scenes, effects and script actions in 3D for iOS devices.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), a conference held on an annual basis by Apple Inc in California to keep the developers updated, has recorded videos and they were sufficient enough to help the team with some guidance.

What the future Graphmented AR app holds for us

Fueled by the inspiration and positive feedback by the apple users, Graphmented plans to add more data sources and support more chart types to give the power of communication and presentation of data to the app users.